The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved several actions to extend the life of local landfills and boost recycling Wednesday.
Supervisors voted 4-0 to aim toward diverting 75 percent of all trash in unincorporated areas away from landfills by recycling more by 2025. Supervisor Greg Cox was away in Washington D.C. as an officer of the National Association of Counties.
The County, through the trash haulers it contracts with in unincorporated areas, currently diverts, or recycles, 62 percent of all trash away from landfills, exceeding the state’s current 50 percent requirement.
County staff said increasing the County’s diversion rate would accomplish a number of goals: it would help keep up with new state regulations, cut greenhouse gas emissions by diverting methane-creating landscape trimmings and food scraps away from landfills, and reduce the future need for more landfills.
County staff said unincorporated areas could still improve recycling to include more paper, plastic and metals. However, they said the largest gains could be reached by recycling and keeping more organic materials — landscape trimmings and food scraps — and construction and demolition materials out of landfills.
County staff estimated that those two categories make up two-thirds of the trash currently going into landfills.
The Board’s vote increased County’s franchise fee for trash-hauling companies from the $2.35 per ton to $6.96 per ton. The fee had not been increased in 20 years.
